In
1965 I bought my first book from Maple Street Book Shop. It was
50 Poems by e.e. cummings and I still have it. Mary Kellogg
and her sister Rhoda Norman opened the store earlier in the year,
and the bookmarks boasted "Five Rooms of Paperbacks,"
something the city of New Orleans never had before,
a shop dedicated to stocking the greatest and latest in paperback
books. Before the year was out, the book shop was well known for
something other than its growing stock and willingness to special
order books. Because Mary and Rhoda Norman felt like fish out of
water in mostly conservative New Orleans, the bookstore became a
place the left wing and avant garde could depend on as a source
for their books and as a meeting place. They would hang out on the
screened side porch – where the travel section is today –
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schmoozing
until after dark, sometimes well after closing hours if anyone had
enough pocket change to run down to Bruno's and buy a few beers
to fuel the conversation.
In my memory it was all glamorous,
everyone wearing dark glasses, black turtlenecks, and long hair
(my memory may not be so reliable on some of these finer details)
except for Mary who always seemed to have on a crisp white cotton
blouse, wore her hair short and frosted, and had sunglasses with
cool-green lenses.
Part of the glamour too, I'm sure,
had to do with my being younger than those I perceived as the hip
intelligentsia, the college professors and students who dressed
in black and talked about Neitzche. I was only a high school senior,
beneath the notice of that group, and not only that, Rhoda and I
were usually tearing in |
